Seagate released its observations on technology and data storage trends in 2024, and expects storage to remain an important key to technological innovation.
According to market research firm IDC, global data storage will reach 2027ZB in 291 and will drive storage demand at a faster growth rate.
The development of self-generating artificial intelligence (AI) will drive an increased demand for data storage, making data storage methods crucial for enterprises building self-generating AI. Furthermore, as data centers store significantly more data, low-capacity hard drives will gradually be replaced by high-capacity ones. In the future, the average capacity of a single hard drive will increase from 16TB to 30TB. At the same time, the technology used will shift from existing PMR perpendicular magnetic recording to HAMR heat-assisted magnetic recording, allowing for more data storage per drive while reducing space and power consumption while also providing increased durability.
In addition, as data access frequency increases, flash memory in storage architecture becomes more important, but traditional hard drives will still be the most cost-effective storage option.
Edge computing, the Internet of Things, quantum computing, genetic data, and medical technology development will all drive increased storage demand. A lot of real-time information and existing data will need to be preserved and linked for real-time analysis and prediction. Quantum computing will also require the storage of large amounts of data and may even change traditional storage architectures. Genetic engineering and medical applications also require enormous data storage space. For example, a single human genetic data set requires at least 200GB of storage space. Coupled with data security considerations such as personal privacy, dedicated databases and secure cloud storage solutions will need to be established. Furthermore, a high-throughput analysis platform will need to be created for subsequent research.
